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Inno3D iChill GTX275 Review

Conclusion

The Inno3D iChill GTX 275 with Arctic Cooling Accelero XXX cooler performed great in testing, and being factory overclocked definitely helped. The temperatures never got close to reaching 50C, and the fan noise was bearable even at 100% as it was nearly drowned out by the case fans. There is more headroom left in the card for overclocking. The great core cooling and quiet operation are superb features of this card, especially combined with the stream processor power of the GTX 28x series cards. The 55nm design of this core paired with the massive Accelero XXX combined for an extremely cool operating temperature while loaded.

The only major downfall to this card is that the memory chips are not cooled by heatsinks, save for three of the 14 that are used as props mainly to keep pressure on the forward-mounted chip, thus limiting the overclocking capability of the memory. The video card does have an audio connection, but does not come with an audio cable or DVI to HDMI converter to allow HDMI usage with the card out of the box, for users who prefer or rely upon HDMI connections. Finally, the card is longer than reference GTX 275s by quite a bit (it's 12" long), which could pose a problem for cramped cases. All of these are really minor points however, since HDMI is not too common yet and is merely not supported out of box, and that RAM-sinks would not add much more headroom – although it still would have been a nice feature to find. Also, users with small cases should make sure that there is enough room for this graphics card since it is so long, with proper preparation, problems can be avoided!

In the end, all of the downfalls are overshadowed by the highlights, proving that this factory overclocked video card with non-reference cooling can really put out some serious competition. There is some room for minor improvement, but it should be plenty capable to deliver high-level performance for most end users!